When filming about Jesus’ birth, animals don’t always follow script

MATERA, Italy (CNS) — The hardest part about making a movie about Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus is convincing the animals to follow the script.

Herds of sheep, goats, a soaring hawk, ornery oxen, a baby calf, caravaning camels and pack donkeys all feature in a new film, "The Nativity Story," due out in theaters worldwide Dec. 1.

Digital technology has made putting a shooting star and hovering angels on celluloid a cinch, but convincing an ox to kneel and low before the baby Jesus in a manger proved to be an ordeal, crew members told journalists May 23 during filming in this southern Italian city.

Because animals are more used to doing improv than following stage direction, sheep wranglers and ox whisperers were hired to help with filming, and local Italian shepherds were hired to play the shepherds in the movie.

But the shepherds’ real-life skills in steering sheep were sorely challenged as director Catherine Hardwicke called for several retakes, urging them to keep their furry flocks on a particular path and not to run over Mary and Joseph as they crested a hill.

The film by New Line Cinema, which brought moviegoers "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, is being shot this spring and summer in the ancient city of Matera, the same rocky, mountaintop city where Mel Gibson filmed "The Passion of the Christ."

The city is famous for its ancient "sassi" or carved-out-of-the-rock neighborhoods and its cream yellow, limestone-walled streets. Because the city’s historical center poses a striking similarity to what Jerusalem might have looked like 2,000 years ago, directors have chosen Matera as a backdrop for filming the holy city and its environs in movies set in biblical times.

Scriptwriter Mike Rich said he wanted the story to flesh out who Mary and Joseph were and what emotions they must have felt as they faced the immense responsibilities God entrusted to them. He said he was inspired to write the screenplay after seeing Time and Newsweek put the Nativity of Christ on the cover of their 2004 Christmas issues.

However, he said he felt the story of the Nativity had always been presented as an "event-based" story: what happened and when, with little about how the protagonists lived their faith. After months of research and input from religious scholars, Rich started writing what he called "a character-based story."

"Talk about limited source material," he said, noting that the only description of Joseph he found in the Bible was that "he was a righteous man."

Rich, a nondenominational Christian from Beaverton, Ore., said that even though his story was speculative he still sought to keep it faithful to the spirit of the biblical account.

The result is that the young Mary, played by 16-year-old Oscar nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider"), and Joseph, played by a 26-year-old graduate of Julliard in New York, Oscar Isaac, leap to life on the scripts’ pages and hopefully, Rich said, also on the screen.

Hardwicke said that when she first saw the script’s title she thought it would not be interesting because she knew the story of Jesus’ birth "backward and forward." But she said she was "intrigued because the writer got inside the heart and soul" of the characters.

She said that in directing the movie she tried to build on making the characters seem real on the screen so people could easily identify with them and see how ordinary people, like Mary and Joseph, were able to take such a huge leap of faith.

Co-producer Marty Bowen, a Catholic raised in Texas, said that growing up he always put Mary "up on a pedestal."

"The Nativity Story" is trying to make Mary real, Bowen said, adding that he hoped that the movie would help people see "Mary was a girl before she became a woman and a woman before she became the mother of God."

He said people should also feel empathy for Joseph, a man "who finds the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with," then discovers she is pregnant and he is not the father of the child.

"Talk about a crisis of faith of staggering proportions," Bowen said.

Bowen, who wears around his neck a rosary his grandmother brought him from Rome and a medal of St. Christopher his mother gave him, said the story of Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds they meet is "a journey of faith that’s rewarded" by God. But people also "need to understand how they earned that" divine reward, he said.

The film’s promoters sent copies of the script to a number of religious scholars for their input as well as to the head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop John P. Foley, and secretary of communications for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Msgr. Francis J. Maniscalco.

While Archbishop Foley told Catholic News Service in late May that he had yet to read the script, Msgr. Maniscalco said he found the screenplay "faithful to the biblical narrative and that the additions made for narrative and theatrical purposes were tasteful."

Bowen said because of the enormous success of Gibson’s movie about Christ’s passion Hollywood has awakened to the potential popularity of religious-themed films.

"Gibson was a pioneer, a trailblazer, and we’re trailing the blazes," he said.

Rich, too, said Gibson helped break barriers.

"If I had made this script two years ago, who knows" if a major studio would have given it the green light, he said.